


Before You...

by jules1278, orphan_account



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jules1278/pseuds/jules1278, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Co-Authored by Jules1278</p><p>Their first day together, really together, and memories of the months before.  Sam and Mercedes adjust to their love being wide open to the world...and themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before You...

Sam’s alarm starts blaring at 6:15. He stretches, and for just a fraction of a second, he doesn’t remember. And then he does. A smile breaks out over his face, slowly, as he thinks about his girl. His Mercedes.

He catches himself grinning in the mirror, and, muttering “don’t be a jerk” to himself, he takes off for the shower. He’s already running late, and has to use the upstairs bathroom, since Kurt's already in the one down in the basement.

Then it’s Wheaties in the kitchen with Finn while Kurt’s on the phone downstairs coordinating his outfit with Blaine.

Sam narrowly misses Kurt coming up the stairs as he dives down them to grab his bag, and then he’s running back up, taking them two at a time, because he’s never felt lighter.

[ One night he’d been trying to sleep with his sister Stacy on one side and his brother Stevie on the other, the way it seemed to work best. Most nights it wasn’t too terrible packed in like this in the motel room, but when it was hot out, like now, it made it damn hard to sleep. He rolled over and looked at his folks. He’d never looked at ‘em near as much as he had lately. Even with all the shit falling down around them, they weren’t crumbling. That was something at least.

He could just make out their outlines in the dark. But if he turned on the light, he knew they’d be holding hands. 

It was weird finding out your parents were human and just plain people. He knew they’d tried like hell to make this right and turn it around and this new job in Kentucky was the fresh start they’d been looking for. 

It just sucked that he had to say good-bye to everyone.

One person more than anyone else. 

He closed his eyes again. Maybe sleep would come. ]

Now the boys are sprinting out the front door at five til seven. And Sam runs right into Finn’s shoulder.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Sam asks as he rubs his nose.

Finn points and Sam’s eyes slowly catch up, and there at the end of the driveway sits Mercedes’ brand spanking new graduation gift from her parents: a slick new Chevy Cruze.

Sam grins and ambles down the driveway, suddenly taking his time, because they have all the time in the world now, don’t they?

“Y’all go on ahead, I’ll catch up later, okay?” And Finn says something back he can’t quite catch.

Yeah, later. _Gotta see about a girl._

As he gets closer, he can see she’s got her head on the steering wheel, which is covered with some kind of fake, purple fur. And she seems to be having an internal argument with herself.

He kneels down and knocks on her window. She's dying of embarrassment right now, but she pushes the button to lower the window.

"What's going on?" He’s squinting in the sun, and puts a hand over his eyes to shade so he can see her better.

"Do you want a ride to school?"

"Sure.” And he walks around to the passenger side, opens the door, tosses his duffel in back and slides in next to her.

They don't say one word the whole way there, just turning and grinning at each other and singing along with the radio, until here they are, at McKinley. Together. He comes around and opens her door.

"It'll be fine," and kisses the top of her head and grabs her hand.

She's feeling a little sick about seeing Shane and about walking into Glee club the first time as just really THEM finally and hearing what everyone will say about it. Puck will smirk and who knows what Santana will say. 

But it’s just nerves. She loves Sam. And the world could really use a helluva lot more of that, if you ask Mercedes.

She knows their friends are happy for them, and she really couldn’t give two shits about what the rest of the school thinks, but she just wants to enjoy this for a second. Just them.

So she pulls on his hand and brings him back close.

"Just stand here for a minute with me."

He drops his duffel off his shoulder, and puts his arms around her.

And she can smell the shower gel on him and his chin is scratchy because he didn't shave this morning. Butterflies are spinning around in her stomach a million miles an hour. She can hear other kids driving in and going into the school, but it’s all just background noise.

"It'll only be the first time once," he says.

Now she's really blushing. He's said that before.

[ They’d been to the carnival, kissing on the tilt-a-whirl, sharing cotton candy, and a large lemonade. Holding hands, they’d walked to her car, tired and happy. 

It was their last day.

Sam was leaving the next day for Kentucky. 

She held his hand and she thought _he’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s leaving_.

They rode in silence along the bumpy gravel roads. She didn’t want to look back on this night and say she hadn’t led with her heart. 

So, she parked near the tree where they had sat during the Spring, killed the lights, and turned off the ignition. Sam was reaching for their blanket as she closed her door. He met her in front of the car and laced his fingers with hers. They made their way down the hill, slowly and steadily, until they were under the darkest shade of the tree. He knelt down, straightening out the edges of the blanket.

“Sam,” she said. “Stop.”

In one swift move, he was up on his feet again and his hands cupped the back of her neck, leaning their foreheads together. He was breathing like he’d been running a mile instead of walking down a grass covered hill outside old Lima. 

“Mercedes, it’ll only be the first time once.”

“I know,” she said. 

She kissed him then. Her heart weighed heavy in her chest, but she tucked it away as she pulled his tee-shirt over his head. 

She wouldn’t regret this, him, any of it.

She wouldn’t. ]

"I can't believe you just said that."

"What?" And then it dawns on him and his face flushes, too. "Whoops. My bad."

She playfully smacks his arm, not with real anger or heat or anything. Because it’s Sam. Her Sam. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He could, but he wouldn’t.

He'd said it before in a different situation but she can still hear the words echoing in her head and in her heart, and she does what she did back then. 

Grasping the collar of his jacket, she pulls him down for a kiss (would she ever get tired of kissing this boy? Probably not) and her lips slide into a smile as he pulls away.

"Coach is going to drown me in the pool if I don't get moving."

"Sorry, I’m sorry."

"Don't be. I'm not," he says, sweetly. Then winks. Man alive, if she doesn’t have a weakness for everything that boy does.

He picks his duffel back up as she locks the car and flips her hair behind her shoulder.

Their hands find each other again.

No one looks as he opens the door for her into the school. No one looks as he walks her to her locker, gives her a kiss, and let’s go of her hand. For now. He doesn’t look back as he sprints down the hall towards the pool.

Her phone vibrates and she looks at it.

Text from Sam: ‘see u in glee club. ;)’

She pockets her phone and grins stupidly as she gathers items from her locker and gets ready for her day.

Kurt's talking away about Regionals as they’re walking down the hall and she's half listening and half watching for that familiar head of blond hair to come bobbing up over the crowd of people. And then there he is. She waits by the door and Kurt touches her on the arm with a quiet 'see you in there' and is gone. She notices and she doesn't.

He's smiling at her. That huge ass dorky as all-get-out grin that she loves, and the little 12-year-old inside her screams with joy and she returns the smile. He holds his hand out to her and she takes it.

They walk in to the room to a chorus of catcalls, wolf whistles and just plain old fashioned shouting. Even Mr. Schue chimes in, "It's about time, you two."

Puck runs up and grabs both of them into a bear hug, practically picking them up off the floor.

And now everyone is settling down, and Mr. Schue is telling them something about the assignment this week, and Rachel is already suggesting songs, God love her.

Mercedes is trying to listen, she really is. But she can feel Sam's arm settle over the back of her chair, and now he's playing with her hair, and she can see him out of the corner of her eye, and he doesn’t even seem to realize he’s doing it. Should she tell him to stop? She looks over at Kurt on the other side and he grins and claps silently.

_Okay, definitely not asking Sam to stop, then._

And suddenly she can concentrate better, and maybe even breathe. She makes it through the rest of her classes, and after the final bell rings, they find each other in the hall again. The corridor of McKinley where everything happens. Or doesn’t happen.

[ It felt like the whole week had been building up to that exact moment. She sat at the piano and picked out a tune. And she watched the clock.

She didn’t really think about what she was doing, or why she was doing it, but she knew she was counting down to something.

That week had really made her think. She supposed she could have thought more about end results and less about how much it hurt to not hear Sam’s voice again. But it did hurt.

And the things that boy’s voice did to her insides when he sang. Well, she thought a lot about that, too.

Then it was time, and she ran out of the classroom and looked, just stopped and looked. And when she saw him turn that corner and pause and take her in, she knew she was right. She wanted to tell him how sad she was when he left, and how happy she was that he was back. She wanted to tell him that she liked the shirt he was wearing and how he smelled. She wanted to put her hands in his hair. 

She _wanted_.

And when they finally met, after what seemed like ages, in the middle of the hall, and Sam was grinning that crooked grin of his, every thought flew out of her head. They just looked at each other.

Out of the fog, she heard a voice.

She let Shane say everything, and she held back all the things she wanted to say to Sam, and she just left him there. ]

She takes his hand to swing between them. “Hey, you.”

“Hey, yourself,” with that _grin_ she thinks of as just for her, when the right side quirks up like that.

But he’s hesitant.

“Everything okay?”

He looks around and laughs.

“I guess I keep expecting to get interrupted.”

She reaches up to kiss him on the cheek, and as he pushes out a breath, she whispers, “No more interruptions.”

“Well, except for work,” and she laughs and ducks out of his reach when he makes a grab for her.

He texts her when she's leaving her dad's office: ‘come over when ur done if u want.’

She wants.

And so she drives straight over, knocks on the door of the Hummel-Hudson house, and Burt answers the door.

"Hey Mercedes!" he says, ushering her in. "Kurt's downstairs. Grab whatever you want out of the fridge and see if you can pry my son's face off of his laptop, will ya?"

Mercedes shuts the door and thinks for a second before she opens her mouth.

"Actually, I'm here to see Sam."

"Oh," Burt said, eyes widening. "Oh, oh well then."

"If that's okay."

"Sure, sure it's fine. Just go ahead and go on down. He's in his room. Keep the door open. Tell Sam I said that, too."

"Okay."

She sidetracks to the fridge and grabs a couple bottles of water and then slowly walks down the steps. She pokes her head in Kurt's room and gives a quick wave and he waves her in. She shakes her head and points over towards Sam's room and he smiles and gives her a thumbs up.

She loves being able to talk without talking with Kurt.

Sam's door is open only a little and she knocks. When there isn't any answer, she peeks around the corner. He's lying on the bed, earbuds in, and eyes closed. She sighs.

Oh hell, he's sleeping. Poor guy, she thinks.

[ They’d been in Kentucky for eight months and finally in their own home again. His dad had started his new job eight days after they landed in Hotel Six on Hwy 42. But it hadn’t even taken eight seconds for him to start missing her. 

It was usually at night when he noticed it most. He wanted to text her that things were going fine or write on her wall on Facebook or something stupid but his fingers didn’t work right when he thought about her. 

The day he noticed that her relationship status changed on Facebook was fucking terrible. He’d yelled at Stacy and back-talked his mom which got him KP and a tour of duty in his room with no phone.

It sucked.

All of it. 

His mom poked her head around his bedroom door just about time for lights out and he looked up at her.

“I’m sorry, mom.”

“I know you are.”

She handed over his phone and he took it from her dropping it on the bed.

“Something on your mind?” she asked.

“I just miss some of my friends from McKinley.”

“Any one person in particular?”

His momma was no dummy, he thought.

“Yeah. Mercedes.”

“She’s a really nice girl. I liked her a lot. You two have a fight or something?”

“I don’t know.”

And he didn’t. They just hadn’t talked at all since he’d left. Finn and Puck sent him texts or commented on his Facebook. 

Not her though. 

“She’s got a new boyfriend.”

“Oh, Sammy,” she said, walking over to his bed and sitting. She held out her arms and he dove in. Her hands smoothed down his back and over his hair. She kissed the top of his head. “You can still talk to her, you know?”

“Naw, bad idea.”

“Well, you know best.”

They sat there for a long time without talking. It helped fill up that hole inside just for a little bit. 

It was enough. ]

Walking over, she sits the bottle of water on the bedside table and finds a piece of paper. She writes a small note and sets it by the water.

She's about to walk away but Sam sighs in his sleep and she looks over at him. Her fingers reach out and brush his hair away from his forehead. He smiles in his sleep.

"Oh, boy," she says softly.

He wakes up slowly as he feels fingers brush his hair away and his eyes flutter open.

"Hey.." he says, still smiling. "I fell asleep."

"I noticed."

"C'mere." He tugs on her hand and when she squawks he tugs harder.

"Burt will flip out if he finds us in bed together."

"We're on top of the covers fully clothed. And besides, I'm tired. Haven't been sleeping right."

"Me neither." She adjusts his pillow under her head to get a better look at his face.

"Wonder why?"

"We were waitin' on this, I suppose," she whispered.

[ Kurt let him ride shotgun. It was his first day back.

They piled out of the vehicle and grabbed their bags and Sam just stood and looked at McKinley for a minute. 

“She looks the same, man,” Finn said, clasping his shoulder.

Sam just nodded. He didn’t think he could talk right then even if he wanted to. Looking over his shoulder, Finn nodded off in the direction of the front door. He caught a flash of pink and smiled.

“Oh hell yeah.”

“Go get ‘er.”

Sam waved at Finn and Kurt and sprinted off towards the door. He didn’t see Kurt’s puzzled expression as he ran. And he didn’t see when Finn patted his brother on the back. Or when Puck joined their group. Or when Rory was dropped off by his host parents. 

No, he was looking at a lady in pink who held his heart in the palm of her hand.

It was about time she knew, he thought.

And he ran. ]

He squeezes her hand and she closes her eyes, just for a second.

"Text Kurt and ask him to wake us up by nine, okay?"

"Mmmmhmmm."

She does and closes her eyes again.

"I missed you."

"I was only at work for like two hours, Sam."

"Not that. You know what I mean."

Oh, that.

She lays her hand on his chest, feeling the rise and fall.

His steady heartbeat reassuring.

"Yeah, I do. I missed you, too."


End file.
